


Raising The Bar

by Senket



Series: House Dynamics [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Domestic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-24
Updated: 2011-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gregory Lestrade, Junior Auror, returns to the flat he shares with his lover and his lover's much-younger brother mid-disaster. Luckily, he's always been the sort of man to keep his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raising The Bar

Junior Auror was a very strange job, Greg thought. He spent some days being traded between trainers, long hours in educational duels; some days he spent entirely doing lackey’s work, filling and filing papers. And then some days- some days, like today, he expected to be boring until a Senior member grabbed him in passing and apparated without another world. They’d drop into an unfamiliar landscape and take off running. Today he’d forgotten a Junior Auror’s first rule: don’t apparate without your broomstick. He stumbled in at three in the morning, worn, dirty and exhausted, wanting nothing more than to eat, take a shower, wrap himself around Mycroft and go to sleep. Instead came face to face with the Holmes’ terrifying version of a screaming match.

A viscous muggy blue liquid was spreading slowly across their floor, dribbling out of an overturned cauldron near to fire. It smelled like candied ginger and burnt hair and sizzled whenever it touched anything red. Greg watched heavily as it continued to eat its way through half of his Gryffindor jumper, tuning out the sound of Sherlock’s voice. It was too late at night for this. He shuffled passed the eerie stillness that surrounded Mycroft when his boyfriend was upset, snatching a ratty-looking gold towel from the rack. It had been his Quidditch towel once, until Sherlock started using it to clean up all his messes. Greg moved back in, throwing the towel over the sludge and wiping it up, pushing it about with his foot. The sudden silence was what made him look up. Mycroft and Sherlock were both staring at him.

The elder was pale, eyes hard and blank, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his expensive-looking work robes tellingly wrinkled. Sherlock by comparison looked especially boyish. His curls were a tangled mess, globs of blue around his fringe. His face was splotchy, red and white, his small body shaking. He looked like he hated Greg and like he hated Mycroft and like he was all alone.

Mycroft rose to greet Greg, which sent Sherlock careening back into his fit. The boy disappeared into his room, slamming to door shut behind him. Mycroft’s kiss was chaste and quick. He turned to go to the kitchen but Greg wrapped his fingers around the young man’s wrist, pulling him close. Despite Mycroft’s half-hearted struggles, Greg wound his arms around Mycroft’s waist, flattening his palm against a ridged spine. With a great sigh, Mycroft sank into him, looking as tired as Greg felt. “I don’t know what to do,” he mumbled into Greg’s dark hair. “He won’t listen to I thing I say.”

“I’ll talk to him,” he promised, pressing a light kiss to Mycroft’s jaw. Sleep, god, he just wanted to sleep. “Go to bed.”

“I can’t, I’ve got to-”

“Go to bed,” he interrupted, quiet but firm. “I’ll take care of it.”

Mycroft drew away slowly, keen eyes fixed on his face. After a moment, Mycroft sighed, running his thumb across Greg’s mouth tenderly before following it with a slow press of lips. “I love you,” he said softly, lashes fluttering against Greg’s cheek.

The auror smiled, threading his fingers though Mycroft’s hair, ruffling his short cut into something less professional-looking and more human. “Love you back. Now git.” Mycroft complied after only a moment of hesitation more, reaching forward for another short kiss before shuffling into their bedroom. Greg watched with longing before sighing and turning to Sherlock’s door.

He stared at it apprehensively and was terrified to say it felt as though it were honestly staring back. He cleared his throat, rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Sherlock.” No answer. He hadn’t expected one, really. “Sherlock. Let me in.”

“Never.”

“Sherlock, we both know I’m going to be inside this door in a minute, but I’d rather you let me in.” He was maybe being snappy, but it was three in the morning, his comfort jumper had been eaten by mystery goo, and he was still covered in Tadley mud.

“If you’re going to force your way in I’m not going to make any effort to help!”

With a crack, Greg reappeared on the other side of the door. “Sherlock.”

The boy was curled on his bed, pushing his face into his pillow. “I hadn’t locked it, idiot.”

He sighed, sitting on the mattress edge. Sherlock turned his face away. Lestrade sighed, carding his fingers through the boy’s hair. “What’s wrong, Sherlock?”

“Nothing.”

“Sherlock...”

“Mycroft hates me.”

Greg paused. Silence reigned. “That’s not true at all.”

Sherlock huffed loudly, pressing his face into his pillow again. Greg shifted closer, unwinding Sherlock’s fingers from the fabric, he pulled the boy into his lap. Sherlock tried to squirm away but the auror was firm, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s torso and pulling him close. Sherlock started to growl out unflattering remarks first, pushing his fists into Greg’s pectoral muscles, grinding his knuckles into pressure points. Greg flinched but kept hold, waiting until Sherlock had settled with his face hidden against Greg’s shirt. He stroked his fingers over the boy’s back soothingly. Sherlock started to shake. He only sniffed once, but Greg had never actually seen Sherlock show distress. Things were bad. “Mycroft loves you very much.”

“He hates me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Whatever made you think that?”

“It’s obvious!” Sherlock shouted back instead. He hit Greg’s arm with a fist but paradoxically pressed himself more fully into the young man supporting him, strangely eager for the reassurance he never really seemed to need. “He wishes I wasn’t here. He doesn’t want me to leave the flat when he’s gone, he always gets angry whenever I touch anything and when he comes back he only works until you show up.”

“Sherlock.”

“It’s true! When he came in today he started yelling at me for trying to make a Colourless Draught.”

“Mycroft is just worried about you, and he’s very busy.”

“He won’t let me out. He doesn’t want anyone to see me.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” he sighed, cradling the boy against him, kissing his messy hair. “He’s just afraid for you. London’s a big place and he won’t be able to find you if you get lost.”

“I wouldn’t get lost if he just showed me where everything was first!”

He pulled away, pressing a large, rugged palm against Sherlock’s blotched cheek, tilting the boy’s head up to meet his eye. “And what if someone takes you?”

Sherlock blubbered something half-heartedly, glaring up at Greg.

“I’m telling you this as someone who spent the last seven hours trying to track down a banshee, Sherlock. There are a lot of things out there that are not very nice and you can’t fight them.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment, contemplative, sharp eyes fixed on Greg. (The Holmes brothers had very different eyes, shapes and colours all wrong, but they had the same stare, as though they could look through you and tell you things you’d never known about yourself.) “...And what if you taught me how to fight?”

Greg blinked, taken aback. Mycroft was going to kill him. He smiled, a little nervous and a little relieved. “You’ll have a defence against the dark arts teacher next year, Sherlock.”

The boy shook his head stubbornly. “Teach me how to fight with my hands.”

“Teach you how to- Sherlock!”

“I’ve seen you do it. Teach me.”

Greg chuckled at Sherlock’s stubborn expression, brushing tangled curls away from the boy’s forehead. “You still can’t wander the streets of London on your own, Sherlock.”

He seemed to cave into himself, pouting heavily as he picked out a thread in his sheets, cracked nails fluffing it up.

Greg sighed. He really needed to get a stronger resistance to Sherlock’s expressions. He was starting to feel ridiculous. “Tell you what, though,” he said, leaning down to press a brief kiss against the boy’s temple. “I’ll talk to your brother and we’ll take you around London on Sunday, alright?”

Sherlock shrugged, squirmed away, pretended to sulk (but Greg caught the excited gleam in the boy’s grey eyes). “I suppose it’ll do.”

He smiled, patting Sherlock’s shoulder for a moment before standing. “Good then. Go to sleep, you monster.”

“I refuse,” Sherlock answered with a smug smirk.

“Whatever you say,” Greg shot back, winking before sliding out the room, shutting the door with a snick. He felt less asleep than he had before, now, somehow. Time to shower and eat, by god. Walking into the bedroom to grab some pyjamas, he found Mycroft sitting up on the bed’s edge, shuffling bare feet against the carpet with his eyes fixed woefully on his boyfriend.

“Does he really think I hate him?” He sounded surprisingly young. They’d been each working at the Ministry since graduation, Mycroft ascending the ranks fast enough to make Greg dizzy- he wasn’t even sure what Mycroft’s job was anymore, hardly aided by the fact that the young man was, in fact, working for the Department of Mysteries; for the first time Greg realized that Mycroft was barely even a legal adult.

Christ.

He sat astride the other man, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing kisses into his hair. “He feels lonely, that’s all. All of a sudden you’re working all the time and he never sees you.”

“He thinks I’m avoiding him on purpose.” It wasn’t a question. Mycroft leaned heavily into Greg’s chest, pressing his nose into the crook of his neck.

“Maybe. So just spend more time with him.” Greg trailed his fingers up and down Mycroft’s arm shoulder to elbow, trailing kisses down his neck, nipping lightly at the skin between his shoulder blades. “You don’t need to work constantly, love. Everyone already knows you’re a genius. You have all your life, you know. Sherlock’s just trying to impress you. Work on potions with him instead of getting upset when he’s tried to make one without you. Teach him. He wants you to, and I know you want to.” Mycroft was smiling at him. Greg smiled back, rubbing his knuckles against Mycroft’s cheek. “This Sunday, Mycroft, I am taking you and your frightening little brother on a day out and you’re not going to try to worm your way out of it to work, alright?”

“If you insist,” Mycroft answered back, warm and low. Greg grinned, pressing their foreheads together.

“Good. I’m going to eat, take a shower and then come to bed. You better be asleep when I get back, okay.”

“Must I?” Mycroft answered sweetly, leaning forward to brush his lips against the corner of Lestrade’s mouth.

“You really must,” the auror laughed back. “If you try to have your way with me, I’ll just fall asleep.”

“Oh, very well,” Mycroft smiled. “But kiss me first.”


End file.
